Texas Houston Mission: Getting Organized and a Luau to Remember

A letter to the missionaries:

It has been so good to see so many of you again during interviews! Your commitment to the Lord and His work has been inspiring. I look forward to meeting with the rest of you this week. As you have more fully committed to searching out those who are seeking the truth, we've seen miracles poured out upon so many of our Heavenly Fathers children. It's exciting to see the fruits of our collective faith and obedience!

As a Mission President is released, so are his counselors. So I have called two counselors to serve with me in the Mission presidency. They are President Rob Chappell who will continue his service in the Mission Presidency as first counselor and Jose Vasquez who will join us as second counselor.

- President Chappell has wonderful Priesthood Leadership experience (particularly with the YSAs) and is married to Sister Jan Chappell who is the regional public affairs representative. They will be wonderful resources as we begin to pursue more community service opportunities in the mission.

- Presidente Vasquez not only brings his hispanic heritage to our presidency, but he is also the engineer in the Houston temple. His connection to the temple is invaluable as we begin to do some things to elevate the profile of the temple in our teaching efforts.

We will be announcing more on these new, upcoming initiatives in our next MLC and then distribute this information through our established patterns to all of the mission. In the meantime, please extend the same respect and courtesy to these two brethren as you have to me. We are meeting every week to organize events that we believe will bless countless lives.

Lastly, As you have been working so diligently to dramatically increase the number of referrals received in our mission, we have realized that we need to improve our referral management process. To accomplish this we are bringing in some additional resources to assign out referrals more timely and follow up on them diligently as well. So if you are getting texts about the status of referrals you've received, you'll know why :). Please do your best to follow up on any referrals you've received within the first 24 hours.

We love you and look forward to continue working closely with you in the upcoming days, weeks and months!

President and Sister Mortensen

Here are some pictures we took from a luau that our Melbourne Ward Elders and Sisters put on for the ward. It was such a successful evening with delicious food, live polynesian entertainment and a spiritual message. The cultural hall was packed and everyone had a great time! We were so inspired to see what can happen when we take initiative and plan something for investigators